eRIKA lYNNE hANSON

rACHEL sCHMIDHOFER

Curated by JACOB RHODES

Press

Field Projects is pleased to present Show #32: ICICLES IN CAVES, a two person exhibition featuring the work of Erika Lynne Hanson and Rachel Schmidhofer. As a contemporary continuum to classic art historical genres such as Landscape Painting and Still Life Painting, Hanson and Schmidhofer contemplate what we have done and are doing to our environment, what the environment in turn does to us, how we naturalize what we do to each other, and how these “doings” are enacted in the media of representation during our lifetime.

Rachel Schmidhofer lives in New York City and makes still life oil paintings of aquariums, house plants, mineral collections, Plexiglas display cases and goldfish in bags. Through this domesticated collection we can trace the shadow of the wild from its hidden caves, ancient grottoes and mysterious fauna to our living room decor. What saves these works from simply documenting capitalist tokens of imperialism is Schmidhofer’s own sense of wonder and love for these objects and animals. At once vibrantly joyous and admittedly sad, the subjects’ aura not only becomes visible but begins to erase the physical bodies rendered, transporting us back to the original awe under which they were first discovered.

Erika Lynne Hanson lives in Phoenix, Arizona, but traveled to the arctic to make “Initial Encounters: like meets like, iceberg and glacier”. In the video, the artist symbolically reunites an iceberg (in the form of a flag) with the glacier from which it came; a poetic gesture reconnecting long divided companions. The flag, an emblem of country and conquest, is a material distortion from video footage Hanson captured and abstracted using a computer aided loom. Her attempt to plant the flag into the glacier fails as she is unable to pierce the ice, and must seek a less stable form of support. Alongside the video Hanson will be showing abstract sculptural forms reminiscent of shard minerals and icebergs.

For Hanson and Schmidhofer, landscape is a dynamic subject through which they live, move and exist, but also a medium that is itself in motion from one place or time to another, circulating as a place of exchange, a site of visual appropriation, and a focus for the formation of identity.

Erika Lynne Hanson creates weavings, videos, and installations that connect diverse materials, histories, and places. Running through her work is a concern with the idea of landscape; specifically how landscape exists, by definition, as a view or representation—a space or scene that can never be reached physically. Hanson received a MFA from California College of the Arts, and holds a BFA in Fiber from The Kansas City Art Institute. Hanson is a Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Art fellow and has been artist in residence at Real Time and Space in Oakland CA, The Icelandic Textile Center in Blonduos, IS, and The Wrangell Mountain Center in McCarthy, AK. In 2012 she CO-Founded 1522 Saint Louis, an experimental project space in Kansas City. Hanson is currently Assistant Professor of Fibers/Socially Engaged Practices at Arizona State University.

Rachel Schmidhofer was born in Pittsburgh, PA. She received an MFA from Yale University (2011) and a BFA from Washington University (2008). She has had solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY, Novella Gallery, New York, and Glike Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at Zurcher Gallery, New York, Gallery Poulsen, Copenhagen, Anna Kustera, New York, and the Torrance Art museum, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been featured in Modern Painters, the Huffington Post, New American Paintings, and Hyperallergic. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Field Projects

Field Projects Gallery

Field Projects is an artist-run project space and online venue dedicated to emerging and mid-career artists. Centered on long-term curatorial projects, Field Projects presents monthly exhibitions at their Chelsea location in addition to participating in pop-up exhibitions and art fairs. The gallery invites artists to submit their work for consideration twice a year through an open call submission process.